Big 4 Festival Tickets: Metallica, Slayer, Megadeth and Anthrax

Those holding out hope for a “Big 4” tour of North America will have to keep waiting. Thrash metal titans Metallica, Slayer, Megadeth, and Anthrax announced today, January 25, that they will share a stage in the United States for the first time ever — but only for a single day.

The so-called Big 4 Festival goes down April 23 at the Empire Polo Club in Indio, CA. Public ticket sales for the event begin January 28 at 10 a.m. (PST). Regular ticket prices are set at $99, but VIP passes will also be available for $199, according to Ticketmaster.com.

If the Empire Polo Club sounds familiar, that’s because its fields are the annual setting for the three-day Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival. Festivities for Coachella 2011 will run April 15-17, the weekend right before the Big 4’s big day out.

It is unclear how many tickets are allotted for the Big 4 Festival itself and whether it will have a similar capacity to Coachella, which last year had an estimated daily attendance of about 75,000 people.